Barnes Review/Foundation for Economic Liberty, Inc.

Founded by Willis Carto in 1994, The Barnes Review (TBR) is one of the most virulent anti-Semitic organizations around. Its flagship journal, The Barnes Review, and its website, Barnesreview.org, are dedicated to historical revisionism and Holocaust denial.

Extremist Group Info:

Date Founded

1994

Location

Washington, D.C.

Ideology

Associated Extremist Profiles

The organization is also a moneymaking enterprise. Besides journal subscriptions, its TBR Book Club and online bookstore promote and sell a wide range of extremist books and publications. The Barnes Review also hosts nearly annual conferences that attract an international crowd of antigovernment extremists, anti-Semites, white supremacists, and racist conspiracy theorists.

In Its Own Words

"Without a means of confronting the onrushing third world, white civilization is doomed. It can do nothing else but deteriorate to a third world level with all that implies: the final triumph of liberalism; political correctness; a garbage culture; poverty; the extermination of the middle class and then Marxism. It means Jewish political and cultural domination, including a political tyranny comparable to Stalinism."
— Willis Carto, "Is Christianity Relevant?" Barnesreview.org

"[The Barnes Review] aims to tell you the truth — the whole truth about history — things you need to know to figure out how things got so screwed up — and why. It's a good investment in your family's future. No other history publication in America can truthfully say that. And that's the truth."
— Willis Carto, "About The Barnes Review," Barnesreview.org

Background

Named after Harry Elmer Barnes, a prominent 20th-century anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, The Barnes Review was created by Willis Carto, who also founded the extreme right-wing Liberty Lobby and the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), another Holocaust denial organization. Carto created The Barnes Review as a rival to IHR after he was forced out by the IHR's leadership in 1993 for financial mismanagement.

Claiming that its mission is to "tell the whole about history," TBR really practices an extremist form of revisionist history that includes defending the Nazi regime, denying the Holocaust, discounting the evils of slavery, and promoting white nationalism. The Barnes Review magazine has published articles entitled "Adolf Hitler — An Overlooked Candidate for the Nobel Prize?", "Treblinka Was No Death Camp", "Is There a Negro Race?", "‘Reconquista': The Mexican Plan to Take the Southwest", and "David Duke: An Awakening." The Barnes Review, like most of the radical-right institutions started by Willis Carto over the decades, also gives voice to any number of wild conspiracy theories. TBR's website puts it like this to its readers: "Many intelligent Americans still believe Pearl Harbor was a ‘surprise attack.' It was not. ... Many still believe Columbus (or Leif Ericsson) was first to America. He was not. ... Or what about proof that there was federal foreknowledge and complicity in the OKC bombing? There was. We can't even begin to discuss here the many questions that have never been answered about 9-11. The list of historical lies and distortions goes on and on and on. . ."

Besides serving Carto's ideological and propaganda purposes, much of this "historical" work also serves to raise money. Annual subscriptions to the bimonthly journal are $46. Recommended works by the TBR Book Club, including Cultural Insurrections: Essays on Western Civilization, Jewish Influence & Anti-Semitism and March of Titans: A History of the White Race, can be purchased at TBR's online bookstore. Advertising space is for sale. There is even a "TBR Distributor Program" that will pay people for recruiting new subscribers to the TBR journal. The ad does its best to entice potential collaborators: "But before you say you can't afford it or it's too much work, look how easy — and how profitable — we've made it."

The Barnes Review's nearly annual conferences also provide an opportunity to market TBR's materials and ideology — and are nonsectarian in regards to all manner of extremism. In past years, paying attendees could listen to lectures by longtime anti-Semite Eustace Mullins, antigovernment conspiracy-monger (and former FBI official) Ted Gunderson, and neo-Nazi Alex Hassinger, who runs Nordwave, a Florida group that calls itself "The Voice of National Socialism." Hutton Gibson, an anti-Semitic "radical traditionalist Catholic" and the father of actor Mel Gibson's, was extremely popular during the 2003 conference.

Even some more supposedly mainstream individuals have participated in what is really a Willis Carto show. William Lind of the Free Congress Foundation, a far-right outfit headed by Paul Weyrich (one of the founders of the Moral Majority), gave a speech at the 2002 conference. Although he told his audience that his Free Congress Foundation was "not among those who question whether the Holocaust occurred," he went on to lay blame for "political correctness" and other evils on so-called "cultural Marxists," who turned out to be the same folks Carto blames for America's ills. "These guys," Lind explained, "were all Jewish."

There is also an international presence at many of these conferences. For example, Arthur Kemp, a notorious South African white supremacist tied to the U.S. neo-Nazi group National Alliance who was once accused of helping plan a major terrorist assassination in his home country, spoke in 2006.

More recently, The Barnes Review has begun promoting Christian Identity, a radical theology that claims that Jews are the literal descendants of Satan, on its website and in its journal. The article "Christian Identity: American's Best Hope?" appeared in the January/February 2008 issue of The Barnes Review, and Carto personally posted to its website the article, "Is Christianity Relevant?" The article outlined Carto's belief that "the Identity message holds out the hope for survival — not only spiritual and cultural survival — but racial survival."